Obesity remains a serious health problem and it is no secret that many people want to lose weight. Behavioral economists typically argue that “nudges” help individuals with various decisionmaking flaws to live longer, healthier, and better lives. In an article in the new issue of Regulation, Michael L. Marlow discusses how nudging by government differs from nudging by markets, and explains why market nudging is the more promising avenue for helping citizens to lose weight.

Armed with a computer model in 1935, one could probably have written the exact same story on California drought as appears today in the Washington Post some 80 years ago, prompted by the very similar outlier temperatures of 1934 and 2014.

Two long wars, chronic deficits, the financial crisis, the costly drug war, the growth of executive power under Presidents Bush and Obama, and the revelations about NSA abuses, have given rise to a growing libertarian movement in our country – with a greater focus on individual liberty and less government power. David Boaz’s newly released The Libertarian Mind is a comprehensive guide to the history, philosophy, and growth of the libertarian movement, with incisive analyses of today’s most pressing issues and policies.

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A Damn Fine Health Care Proposal

The White House is sending out teasers regarding a health care proposal that President Bush will unveil in his (penultimate!) State of the Union address on Tuesday. By design, such teasers leave out important details. Yet they give the outlines of what could be a damn fine health care proposal.

The president is proposing to limit the currently unlimited tax break for employer-sponsored health insurance. He’d also extend that newly limited tax break to people who don’t get coverage from an employer – in fact, he’d completely break the link between the tax break and employment.

That tax break is behind much of the inefficiency and inequity in America’s health care sector. It encourages almost 200 million Americans to behave irresponsibly, which increases the cost of health care for themselves and everyone else. Economists on the left and right have argued for limiting or eliminating it for decades. The last president to propose such a limit was named Reagan.

It’s going to be a tough sell, of course. The administration estimates that 20 percent of covered workers would face a higher tax burden, and those workers probably will object that their taxes would increase. The fact that reducing government influence over people’s decisions is effectively a tax cut is a much harder point for most people to grasp. Other opponents will scream that the proposal would destroy employer-based health insurance. What those opponents actually mean, however, is that they don’t think workers should be free to choose where they purchase their health insurance.

I have criticisms of the proposal, too. For example, I think we should do more to give workers ownership over the money that employers currently spend on health benefits. (Mike Tanner and I lay out one way to do so in Healthy Competition: What’s Holding Back Health Care and How to Free It.) Unless workers own those dollars, they might have to take a pay cut to exercise their new freedom to choose, which doesn’t seem like freedom at all.

Important details are still missing – details that will determine how helpful, complicated, and politically feasible the proposal will be. I’ll withhold final judgment until I see the final product. But at this point, it appears that President Bush is the only prominent politician who is taking health care reform seriously.